


that's what friends are for

by drunkonyou



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Frenemies Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson, Misunderstandings, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkonyou/pseuds/drunkonyou
Summary: Sam and Bucky aren't friends. Until, of course, they are.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Sharon Carter, Sharon Carter & Sam Wilson
Comments: 11
Kudos: 80





	that's what friends are for

**Author's Note:**

> not-really-enemies to sort-of-friends sambucky is god tier actually 
> 
> (slight warning: there is a smidge of torture, but most of it is offscreen, but if I need to add more tags then let me know!)

“Just throw it at me.”

“No.”

“Sam, throw it at him.”

 _“No,”_ Sam focuses his attention on tightening the straps on the back of the shield, _again_. He finally adjusted it so it fits comfortably in his hand, so now he’s just stalling. “Can’t a guy get some privacy around here?”

Sharon makes a face like she just stepped in dog shit and puts her hands on her hips. “You’re in my backyard.”

Barnes snorts, the bastard. Maybe he will throw the shield. Right at his ugly head. He doesn’t know where, when, how, or _why_ Barnes and Sharon became friends, but Sam feels like it was behind his back, and like he drew the short straw somewhere along the way.

“Fine, be bashful,” she tells him, turning back to the sliding glass door. “I’ve gotta make some calls anyway.”

Sam takes a swig of water from his bottle when Sharon’s back in the house, but when he glances over his shoulder, there Barnes still stands in all his five-foot-something glory. He’s scratching his chin in a real good Brando impression and staring at him like he’s a problem that needs to be solved.

“Take a picture on your flip phone, it lasts longer.”

“Why don’t you—”

“No.”

“But—”

“Barnes,” it comes out a laugh, but not a funny one. Sam is, what the greats might call, _exasperated_. He’s been out here all morning, throwing this fucking Frisbee around trying to get a feel for the thing, but all he’s managed to do is lodge it in the same tree three times, bust a post on the fence separating the neighbor’s yard, and scare the shit out of Sharon’s cat, who’s been watching him from the kitchen window for the last two and a half hours.

This is the first time he actually picked up the shield since tucking it under his bed three or so months ago, but. It doesn’t feel right on him, not like his wings. It’s both too heavy and too light in his hands, and feels just like a big hunk of metal with the most uncomfortable leather strap known to man.

He thought he could do this, for about an hour, when he was still riding the high of victory. But the moment they left Tony’s property...he doesn’t really know what happened. He started to second guess himself. And he wouldn’t say _regret_ , but. It’s close. So he threw the thing under the bed in Sharon’s guest room and hasn’t looked at it since. Steve had some big fucking shoes to fill (both physically and metaphorically) and at the end of the day he really just doesn’t think he’s the guy for the job.

So he really, really doesn’t know why he took it out today of all days.

“Hey,” of course Barnes is still there. He’s like a creepy fucking shadow. “You alright?”

And the funny thing is, for a split second, he almost tells him what’s on his mind. Barnes! Someone take his temperature.

Sam laughs again, and he hates how sad it sounds this time. It’s barely after noon and he feels like he’s already used up all his energy for the day. “I am not talkin’ about this with you, man. Nuh-uh, sorry.”

Barnes stares at him some more. Looks at the shield, looks around the yard, rubs his shiny black fingers over his jaw. “You know I helped Steve learn how to use that thing.”

Well, that is definitely not what he was expecting.

He continues. Sam holds back from chucking the stupid thing at him. For now. “We all took turns, but at the end of the day, I was the one he trained with most. I taught him how to box before the war, you know,” he shrugs like it’s nothing, but Sam can see a muscle standing out in his jaw. This isn’t—is the Winter Soldier _guilt-tripping_ him? He doesn’t feel bad for the guy. He refuses to stoop to that level.

He’s just caught off guard; they never get personal like this.

Barnes gets a little closer, like he’s testing the waters or something. “We didn’t realize it at the time, but out of all the Howlies, I was the only one that matched him in strength. Not even Dugan, who was a fuckin’ strongman before the war.”

Right, Barnes was walking around with knockoff Super Soldier Serum running through his veins and no one had any idea. Ah shit, that makes him feel a little something.

Maybe he’s onto something though. Maybe it would be good to practice with someone who’s vaguely familiar with the shield, and who could take a hit or two. He looks down at the thing, at the strap that’s shiny with sweat. He sighs.

“I don’t wanna hurt you, Barnes.”

Barnes smiles like the fucking morning sun. “Impossible. I’m the perfect training dummy.”

Well at least they’re on the same page here. 

“Okay,” he tugs the sleeves of his henley up and the sun catches on his prosthesis. Yeah, he’s a stubborn asshole. He should’ve called Barnes out here sooner, before he got to the point of frustration he’s on his way to now. “So. Catching and throwing.”

Barnes gets behind him, putting one hand on his waist and patting his right thigh with the other.

“Woah, man, buy me dinner first, huh?”

Barnes sighs way too close to his ear. “I’m always armed, you know that, right?”

Sam glances down at the black hand on his waist. “Yeah, you are.”

Barnes gives him a punch in the kidney with that black hand. “Don’t get smart, asshole. Now come on.”

Sam goes where Barnes guides him, quietly. The stance he’s got him in is familiar, a classic fighting pose, and he laughs. “You sure you’re not teaching me to box too?”

Barnes steps around him, arms crossed. He looks focused as hell, and a little wistful. “It worked for Steve, so I think it’ll work for you.”

He wants to say, _I’m not Steve_ , but bites his tongue. “Alright,” he says instead, “what am I doing?”

“Chuck it like a Frisbee. Hard as you can.”

He could’ve done _that_. But still, he says nothing, just reels back and throws the shield like his life depends on it. It goes farther than he thinks it has before, but then it hits a tree across the yard and lodges itself in its trunk. He thinks that was pretty pathetic, but Barnes just hums approvingly.

“Good. Now we’ll try it again so the shield bounces _off_ the tree.”

Sam jogs over to pull it out, but it won’t budge, and after a couple fruitless tugs, Barnes slides in and yanks it out like it’s nothing.

Sam sighs and takes it. “Thanks, man.”

Barnes nods, and smiles again. This is so weird. So unlike them, who fight like cats and dogs every chance they get. Is this what being civil is like?

They head back closer to the house and Sam assumes the position he was in and Barnes adjusts his arm so the shield is tilted down a few degrees. And then he throws it again, as hard as he did before, and lo and behold the shield bounces right off the spot it got stuck in before and comes speeding back at them. Sam ducks on instinct, and Barnes laughs as he runs after it. He catches it easily in his left hand like it really is just a shitty little plastic Frisbee. 

Sam isn’t suited for this shit at all. 

“Don’t be afraid of it!” Barnes calls to him.

“What are you gonna say next,” Sam says when he takes the shield from him again. He looks at it disdainfully, “it won’t bite?”

“Oh no, it bites. And it bites hard.”

He hates this guy. Fuck being civil.

“Steve used to break his fingers every other time he caught it, those first few weeks. I had to reset them myself.”

Sam’s stomach does something he does not like at the sound of that. 

“But eventually he got the hang of it. You will too.”

“I don’t heal as quickly as y’all do.”

“Yeah,” Barnes tells him, “but this isn’t my first rodeo with the thing, so I’m gonna show you how not to break your fingers. Sound good?”

“Sounds something.”

So they do this for the better part of an hour, throwing the shield back and forth, throwing it at the trees, and Sam manages not to break anything else, bones thankfully included. 

But the shield still feels like an anomaly in his hands, still feels like someone else’s property. No matter how many times he throws it, it never goes exactly where he wants it, and he’s slowly but surely getting more frustrated than before he had an audience. Because Barnes is being so supportive, and he has no idea why. He looks like a dad showing his kid how to throw a baseball for the first time. He almost doesn’t recognize the guy, who uses up all the hot water when Sharon’s not home and always, without fail, drinks Sam’s leftover vitamin smoothies. The guy’s a menace to society. 

“Alright, that was good. Do it again.”

Sam shakes out his wrist. He almost caught the shield this time, but it slipped right through his fingers and landed on the back patio instead, wrenching his hand in the process. 

“Naw, I’m done, man. I’m heading in to grab something to eat.”

He picks up the shield, brushing grass from it. Sharon’s cat is still watching them, but this time from inside the sliding glass doors. 

“One more time!” Barnes shouts. “You’re getting better!”

“I’m done, alright? I’ve had enough. I don’t got the sort of stamina you do.”

Barnes walks across the lawn towards him. “Come on, Sam. I think all you gotta do is tw—”

“I said I’m done!” It comes out louder than he meant, and Barnes’s eyebrows fly to his hairline. “I don’t wanna do this anymore. Today.” It seemed like a good idea for the first twenty minutes. Now he's just tired. “Okay? Can you respect that?”

Barnes puts his hands up. “Yeah, yeah. But I just think—” 

Before Sam knows it he’s shoving Barnes by the shoulders, and then he shoves him again, all his frustration of the day, the week, the last three fucking months since the fight bleeding out of him. 

“Cut it the fuck out, man. I’m not Steve,” he spits. “Okay? I’ll never _be_ Steve. So I don’t know what you think you’re gonna accomplish here.”

Barnes takes the abuse, letting himself be pushed around like he’s a normal human and not some juiced up former assassin that could withstand just about anything.

“Don’t use me as a fucking stand-in. This isn’t nineteen forty-whatever.”

He turns back to the house, but Barnes stops him with a metal hand on his bicep, and his grip almost hurts. He spins him around fast and that patient guy he’s been acting as all afternoon is gone. Finally he recognizes him again.

(Though he doesn’t think he’s ever seen him this angry) 

“A _stand-in_? Fuck you, man. Fuck you. Can’t I just be decent?”

And just like that he’s past his boiling point. He’s tired and sore all over and sick of the world and what comes out of his mouth next is the shittiest knee-jerk reaction he’s ever had. “We’re not friends, Barnes! We’ve never been friends! Steve has always been our common fucking denominator!”

And he doesn’t even regret saying that, not even when Barnes looks like he just got slapped clean across the face. He’s still buzzing with manic energy, and before he knows it he’s shoving him again and using his lovely new skills to chuck the shield across the yard.

“Go fucking long.”

He fully intended on storming into the house as his dramatic exit and letting Barnes fetch the shield—since it should probably be his, anyway—but his momentum was off, of course, and it’s on a fast path to sailing clean over the privacy fence and into the street. Barnes swears and goes speeding after it, but somehow he’s not quick enough and when he jumps to catch it—with his right hand, the dumbass, him and Steve were perfect for each other—he crashes into the wooden fence and the shield clips his hand before going over. The sound it makes when it hits the street on the other side is akin to a stockpot hitting the kitchen floor.

“Shit.”

Sam follows Barnes out the back gate, both of them out of breath and sweatier than they were an hour ago. Barnes has got his hand clenched tight and held against him, but Sam can clearly see the blood between his fingers, and he’s about to apologize (for more things than one), but they both stop short when they step out onto the sidewalk.

There’s a guy standing in the middle of the street, a young guy, probably early twenties, and he’s staring at the shield in his hands like he just found the holy grail. Great. This kid, in his all-black getup, is probably gonna run off with the thing, and Sam is gonna be embarrassed as fuck. And Barnes definitely won’t let him live it down.

“Hey,” Barnes shouts, stepping off the concrete. He’s got his left hand behind his back, and when he gets ahead of Sam he can see the outline of a handgun pressing through his thin shirt. 

He grabs his shoulder and pulls him back. “Man, he’s just a kid,” he hisses in his ear.

Barnes looks at him, brows furrowed like he doesn’t understand, but brings his hand back around to his front and uses it to cradle his injured one instead. He looks back at the guy, still standing in the middle of the fucking street, but this time he’s staring at Barnes, at his black arm, at the hem of his shirt that’s been tugged out of place in his attempt to reach his weapon. Huh.

“Sorry,” the guy says, breaking out of whatever sort of trance he was in and crossing the street. He can feel Barnes stiffen slightly at his side. He holds the shield out to Sam, and Sam takes it slowly. “I was out for a walk and your shield almost knocked me out.” He’s got an accent, but Sam can’t place it.

“Yeah,” Sam says mildly, “sorry about that.”

And then his eyes are on Barnes again, and when he notices the blood that’s snaking its way down his wrist, he smiles. “You’re hurt.”

Barnes looks down like he forgot about it. He relaxes his hand, and there’s so much blood Sam can’t even tell where it’s coming from. Now that his adrenaline is starting to die down, shame is making a home in his chest. _Damnit._ He’s bullied him six ways from Sunday but he’s never _hurt_ the guy.

Barnes closes his fist again. “It’ll heal.”

The kid takes a step closer. On instinct, Sam holds the shield up. “How fast?”

“Huh?”

“How fast will it heal?” He looks hungry, almost. It’s unsettling.

Sam can hear something whir in Barnes’s arm, like a physical manifestation of his hackles rising. “Why?” 

The kid finally quits the staring contest he had going with Barnes’s hand in favor of looking him straight in the eye. He smiles again. Really unsettling. “Just curious...Sergeant.”

“What the fuck did you just call me?”

His voice is low, deadly, and before Sam knows it he’s grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him back again. It’s not that he doesn’t trust him, but. Well. “Alright man, what game are you playing?”

“No game, sir. I am simply a college student.”

Sam makes a face. “What does that have to do with anything?”

He takes his backpack off and sets it on the ground at his feet. Sam and Barnes both take an instinctual step back, but just a notepad is pulled from the bag.

“Sorry,” the kid flips the notepad open and grabs a pen from his pant pocket. “I haven’t even introduced myself. My name is Victor.”

Sam and Barnes don’t waste any breath giving him their names. Sam thinks it’s safe to assume he already knows theirs, somehow.

Victor doesn’t falter with the awkward silence, instead just smiles that smile that doesn’t exactly reach his eyes and says, “I am writing a paper for a class on Super Soldiers. Specifically on the aspect of advanced healing.”i

Barnes lets out a breath, and Sam would be deaf to it had he not been living with the guy for the last three months. This whole thing is leaving a bad taste in his mouth.

“School ain’t back in yet,” Sam says carefully. His grip on the shield tightens just a bit.

Victor’s got the answer already on his tongue. “Summer classes, you know.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” the words sound ripped from Barnes’s throat.

Another easy, uneasy smile. “Perhaps you may help me get in touch with Captain Rogers?”

“Okay, champ, it was nice meeting you.”

He drags Barnes back onto Sharon’s property and locks the gate behind them. Barnes wrenches himself free and stalks towards the house.

“Hey,” Sam calls. His heart is jack rabbiting in his chest. They haven’t had an encounter like that in— _years_. “You okay?”

“I have to go wrap this,” is all Barnes says, not even looking his way, and disappears inside the house.

  
  


Sam showers and feeds the cat and zips the shield back up in its canvas bag. Barnes doesn’t make a peep from his room downstairs, and Sam pretends like he doesn’t feel bad.

Sharon finds him rummaging through the kitchen drawer they keep full of takeout menus at about six. “You know you can just download Postmates, right?”

“Old habits,” Sam says and finally finds the one he’s looking for.

Sharon grabs the paper menu from his hand and throws it back in the drawer. She shuts it with her hip. “I’m cooking and you’re helping me. You’re not living on Chicken Mei Fun and egg drop soup under my roof.”

“Damn, okay, Mom.”

She opens the fridge and sticks her head inside. Sam broods in the corner. “So tell me why I just had to stitch Bucky’s hand up.”

He bites the inside of his cheek. “He didn’t do it himself?”

“He took his arm off.”

Sam frowns. Barnes only takes his arm off when he’s not doing good. Weird coping mechanism, but he never questioned it. His hunger is gone now, though. Might be from his own guilt, might be from the creep they met outside.

Sharon retracts herself from the fridge with her arms full of fresh veggies and dumps them all unceremoniously on the island. She shakes her hair out. “What happened out there?”

Sam stares at the clock above the sink, definitely not avoiding her gaze. He swallows down the urge to go check on Barnes. “Too much testosterone, you know. Yard wasn’t big enough for the both of us.”

Sharon slaps him on the back when she passes behind him on her way to the stove. “You do know how many weapons are in this house, right?”

He can’t help but laugh. “Is there something the two of you wanna tell me?”

But Sharon isn’t laughing. “I’m serious, Sam. You two fight like college roommates but you’ve never gotten violent. What happened?”

He sighs, leaning up against the counter and out of the way. Maybe she won’t notice if he doesn’t help with dinner as long as he keeps talking. “Okay, first of all, it was an accident. Second...I don’t know, Sharon. I think we’re both just stressed,” no, that’s not right. He corrects himself. “ _I’m_ stressed. Steve left me with— _this_ and I took it out on Barnes when all he was trying to do was help.”

He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t tell her about Victor. He should, she’s with the damn _CIA_ , but the encounter feels weirdly personal. To Barnes.

Sharon looks up from the bell pepper she was slicing and unless Sam is seeing things he swears she’s smiling. “I was wondering when this particular breakdown was going to happen.”

“Huh?”

“Sam,” she sets down the knife carefully, “You’re _Captain America_ now, when…,” she does some mental math, and it almost makes him smile, too, “four short years ago you were working at the VA. Just another vet making a living for himself. It’s about damn time this came out.”

Women really do know everything. “I shouldn’t have taken it out on Barnes though.”

“Hm, no. But I’m sure he’ll understand. Just tell him what you told me.”

So that’s what he plans to do. He does end up helping with the cooking (spaghetti and meatballs and _glorious_ garlic bread) but while he’s doing so he’s writing a mental script for his apology after they eat. Because his momma gave him a conscience the size of Texas and he can’t stand hurting people that don’t deserve to be hurt. And despite it all, despite how Sam used to feel about the guy and how he still busts his balls to this very day, Barnes doesn’t deserve the shit he said. They should learn to be semi civil.

Civil. There's that word again. Maybe it's a sign. 

Sharon rings the dinner bell in the form of popping open a can of cat food, and her cat comes careening around the corner like a banshee. Barnes shows up a moment later with a damp head in a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt with the CIA logo across the chest. He’s only got the one arm and he avoids Sam’s eye like the plague.

They put their plates together and sit at the table and everything is all hunky-dory until Sam asks casually, “how’s the hand?”

And Barnes says, “healed, no thanks to you.”

Sharon visibly clenches her jaw, but says, “stitches come out?”

“In the shower,” Barnes’s jaw is equally clenched.

Sam drops his fork. “I didn’t know you were gonna try to catch it, man.”

He tries to keep his voice level, but he can feel himself getting worked up all over again. It’s like all his self control goes out the window the minute Barnes opens his mouth. He really doesn’t get it.

“What the hell was I supposed to do, Sam, let it go? And let freaks like that kid get their hands on it?” His voice falters, and Sam feels bad for him, almost.

“What kid?” Sharon asks.

“Some creep was asking about my advanced healing,” Barnes tells her dismissively, but he’s got a groove between his eyebrows deeper than the grand canyon and he’s staring at his double helping of pasta a little too intently.

He sighs. “You’re right, Barnes.”

Oh, that makes him want to gag. 

“Sorry, tell me more about this kid?” Sharon’s got her phone out.

“It’s not my fault you had a temper tantrum.”

Sam lets out a surprised laugh, scaring the cat right out of the kitchen who was weaving its way around all their chairs like it didn’t just eat a whole plate of mush. “Temper tantrum!”

And just like that, they’re back to their normal selves and any plans Sam had for apologizing fly right out the window. Civility just does not work for them, apparently. They’re like oil and water, the two of them.

“It wasn’t a temper tantrum,” Sharon tells him. “But I need to know more about this kid. What did he look like?”

“I don’t care what it was,” Barnes shoves a forkful of spaghetti into his mouth. “He’s an asshole.”

“You know _what—”_

Sharon picks up her plate and glass of wine and leaves the kitchen with a sigh.

“You know what?” Sam points his half-eaten piece of garlic bread at him from across the table. “I don’t know why you were being nice to me when we always end up here.”

“Oh, God forbid I think our pissing contest that’s been going on since twenty-sixteen was just in jest. We _live_ together. Yeah, in Sharon’s house, but we decided to stick together for a reason, right?”

“Because we've got no one else, Barnes."

He enunciates each word like he's talking to a child, and not someone who's a hundred and fuck-ever years old. They always end up here. He doesn't even know why he tries, and he definitely doesn't know why Barnes tries.

"Last resort," Barnes says with a scoff, polishing off his glass of wine and immediately pouring another, polishing off the bottle. "Common denominator. Yeah."

They're silent for a while, slowly finishing up their dinner. They're used to arguing, but not like this. Sam doesn't think they've ever actually fought like this before. Maybe it’s stress, and maybe it’s a little bit of the leftover adrenaline from meeting Victor. He doesn't know. 

"We're two very different people," Barnes says when his plate is licked clean. It sounds like it’s taking all his physical energy to keep his voice level, and it’s making him sound startlingly like the guy he used to be, "with two very different pasts. And maybe you're right; maybe Steve is our common denominator. But we've also got the fight in common. And the dying and coming back to life thing. Even Sharon doesn't fully understand that. I think that's a pretty solid basis for at least an acquaintanceship."

"Mutual understanding,” Sam says to his last meatball.

Barnes tips his wine glass in his direction, though he's still frowning. "See? Maybe you're not just all brawn."

Sam kicks him beneath the table. “You’re annoying as fuck, Barnes.”

“I could say the same thing to you, Wilson.”

“Is it safe to come back in?” Sharon is peeking her head around the doorframe. “I need more wine.”

“Barnes drank it all,” Sam holds out the empty bottle. “His stupid ass thinks he can get drunk.”

“God, I wish,” Barnes says. “Maybe I should give your pal Thor a call.”

And just like that Sam is hit square in the chest with _Missing Steve_. It doesn’t hit him often, but, well, maybe his emotions are a little skewed after today. He thinks of the parties Stark used to throw, and the battery acid Thor would bring for him and Steve to drink, and his throat feels a little tight.

“Maybe you should,” he tells Barnes.

Barnes just stares at him. “Don’t fucking start crying, I swear to God. I ain’t Steve either.”

Sharon is deadly quiet with her depleting wine.

Sam conspicuously wipes at his eyes. “That’s for damn sure.”

 _Shit!_ He just can’t stop, can he? It’s like the insults just roll right off their tongues.

“Love of Christ,” Barnes mutters, scratching at his left shoulder. “We’re a pair of fucking children, ain’t we?”

“Guys—”

“We’re just not meant to be friends, I guess,” Sam tells him, resigned. He’s so tired of this.

“Or acquaintances,” Barnes gets up from his chair. “I’m going to bed.”

When he’s out of the kitchen, Sharon reaches for the last piece of garlic bread and splits it with him. “That was some apology.”

“Fuck off.”

Her eyebrows damn near fly off her head. 

He throws his hands in his face. “God, I’m sorry. He just riles me up so damn much, I don’t know what our problem is.”

“I think you need to take a break,” she tells him matter-of-fact. “See other people.”

He huffs. Yeah, she’s probably right.

“You haven’t even called him by his name yet, I think the two of you are past the point of no return.”

So he goes upstairs to his room and wonders as he’s falling asleep who the first one to leave is going to be.

  
  


(He’s forgotten Victor by the time his head hits the pillow, which means he’s definitely out of practice)

  
  


The house is oddly quiet when Sam crawls out of bed in the morning. He wonders if it’s early, but his phone tells him it’s almost ten.

“Sharon?” He calls down the hallway.

“Yeah?” She calls back from her room.

His shoulders slump in relief. At the call of her name, her cat comes bouncing towards him from seemingly out of nowhere, tail flicking like a whip and making a creepy noise low in its throat.

He looks down at it. “The hell is wrong with you?”

But the cat just paces at his feet, sounding like a broken motorbike.

Sharon is still in bed when Sam pushes her door open, hair pulled up and laptop propped on a pillow on her legs.

“Something’s wrong with your cat,” he says in lieu of a greeting. The cat in question is sitting at the top of the stairs now and staring at him with those big bug eyes, the creepy motherfucker.

“What?”

He shrugs. “It’s acting strange.”

“Between you and me,” Sharon says like it’s a secret, “I think she’s pregnant. Remember when she got out over the summer?”

“Oh, great, just what we need. As if one little white devil ain’t enough.”

Sharon laughs at that.

“Where’s Barnes?” He asks, because the quiet is getting to him. Where’s the sound of Barnes cleaning his guns in the garage? All the cabinets slamming shut as he makes himself a pre-breakfast breakfast? Why the hell isn’t the TV on?

“Out?” Sharon says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You keeping tabs on him now?”

Out, right. Barnes is a grown ass man.

(He doesn’t wanna admit it, but a part of him worried for a split second Barnes ran off, and it would be all his fault)

“Hm,” he nods, feeling stupid as hell. “I’m gonna go start on breakfast. Pancakes cool?”

“Sounds great. I’ll be down a second, I just have to send a couple more emails. Hey, I’ve gotten the footage from the traffic cam at the end of the street, but I’m having trouble identifying that kid you guys were talking about. Did he tell you his name?”

“Victor.”

Something doesn’t feel right.

She’s absorbed in her laptop when he turns away. 

The cat flies down the stairs with him, almost tripping him in the process, but instead of heading into the kitchen it breaks away towards the family room, Barnes’s room, and drops itself in front of the shut door.

A weird feeling starts kicking around in his stomach. He would just turn away and continue on with breakfast, but he’s never been one to ignore his instincts. Not since meeting Steve, anyway.

He presses his ear to the door and hears nothing. The cat is pawing to get in. He pushes it away with his foot and opens the door as slow as possible, but it squeezes past him into the room anyway.

Sam peaks his head in. The light is off, fine. The window is open, also fine. The bed isn’t made.

Not fine. Barnes always makes his bed.

“Barnes?” He calls softly, like the guy might be asleep in the ensuite or something. Which—

Bathroom’s empty too.

Heart crawling from his stomach to his throat, Sam pulls the steel suitcase out from the closet and fuck, _fuck_ it feels heavy. He sets it on top of the pullout bed and unlatches it.

And there sits Barnes’s prosthesis in all its black and gold glory.

“Shit.”

Sharon’s fucking cat is snooping around a pile of books on the end table, making that low-on-oil engine sound and for once, he cares what it’s up to. Sam pushes the books around, knocks a half empty bottle of Gatorade to the floor, and there, by the lamp, invisible to anyone who wasn’t an Avenger at some point in their lives, is a smudge of blood.

“Sharon!” He yells, scaring the cat out of the room, and jogs over to the open window. There’s more blood on the windowsill, some scuff marks on the wall, and the screen isn’t latched all the way. 

Footsteps thunder overhead and storm down the stairs and Sharon is crashing through Barnes’s door pistol-first. She sweeps the room with her eyes first and lets her arms drop an inch or two.

“He’s gone.”

“What?”

He shows her the blood, the window, the arm still in its case.

“It was that fucking kid, I swear to God. I knew something wasn’t right with him.”

“Are you sure? Because from what I saw he seemed young. And small.”

Sam sniffs around the room some more but nothing else seems to be out of place. “Go figure, this is the only room in the house that isn’t on the security feed. Fucking Barnes and his privacy.”

“You know that’s not—”

“Get dressed, we’re leaving.”

He pushes past Sharon and takes the stairs two at a time all the way to the top. He dresses like a high schooler about to miss the bus, going so fast he stubs his toe three separate times on the bedpost. He grabs a gun from the false bottom in his nightstand drawer and tucks it into his waistband.

He’s almost out of the room when an annoying thought comes to him. He stops, glances at his bed, swears softly, and takes the shield from its canvas bag.

“Cooperate with me,” he tells the hunk of metal. “I’m pretty sure you’re the reason we’re in this mess.”

Sharon’s waiting by the front door when he descends the stairs, and she hands him a bulletproof vest. Her jacket is bulky with her own. Sam puts the vest on under his shirt in the car.

“Where to?” Sharon asks, speeding down the street and away from her house.

Shit. He hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“Where would you bring a one-armed Super Soldier that may or may not be unconscious?”

They both say it at the same time. “Abandoned warehouse.”

Because their lives are literal cliché comic book stories, Sharon drives them to the old factory on the edge of town that’s been deserted since before he was born or something like that, and parks outside the warehouse out back.

“Stay here,” he tells her, opening his door. “We’ll need a getaway driver.”

“Roger that,” she cocks her gun and puts it in the cupholder right next to her travel mug. “I’ll have backup on standby just in case.”

He salutes her and shuts the door. 

The warehouse looks exactly how Sam imagined it to look, and were he not in work mode right now he would laugh. Semi-concave roof, broken windows, and the door creaks loud enough it echoes through the whole place. But when Sam steps inside, it’s empty. The warehouse is empty.

“Son of a bitch.”

It’s not like he expected to walk in and find Barnes strapped to a chair in the middle of the floor, but, well, that’s exactly what he expected. There aren’t many nooks and crannies to look through, no doors leading off into separate rooms, so Sam heads back out.

Sharon catches his eye the second he’s outside, and he shrugs.

That’s when he hears a scream that sounds suspiciously like Barnes, and it’s coming from somewhere in the factory.

“Fourth floor,” Sharon says in his ear. He nods and jogs towards the towering building, which in itself is a cliché, with its busted windows and rusty smokestacks. The backdoor he finds creaks, too.

The staircase is right inside the door, so he flies up them, gun in one hand, shield in the other.

“Shoulda worn my wings.”

_“If I don’t get a pair of wings, neither do you.”_

He snorts.

The fourth floor of the factory looks like an office wing, and every door is shut. Because of course. Because since Captain Fucking Asshole became his running buddy, life has been anything but simple.

Now what would a comic book hero do? Kick open every door probably, which he’s not about to do.

And then there’s another scream, coming from the end of the darkened hallway, and Sam takes off running that direction.

Sometimes the good Lord looks after him.

The very last door is propped open with an honest-to-God cinder block, and Sam kicks his way in. If he didn’t have an iron gut the sight he barges in on would probably make him vomit up the breakfast he hasn’t eaten yet.

Barnes is stripped to his skivvies and strapped to an old metal desk with ratchet straps, and _holy shit there’s a lot of blood_. It’s dripping down the sides of the desk and soaking into the shitty old carpet, but the only wound Sam can see on him is a slightly gushing hole in his left side and a freshly broken nose. With this amount of blood Sam was expecting him to be mutilated.

“Hello, Captain.”

And lo and behold, it’s Victor, and he’s alone. He got rid of the black sweatshirt in favor of a white T-shirt, and the thing is splattered with red. He’s even got some blood on his neck, and Sam knows it ain’t his. 

“Sam, get the fuck out of here, the kid’s insane,” Barnes gasps from the desk, shiny from head to toe with sweat and looking like he’s been here all night. And who knows, he might have been. The thought makes him want to put a bullet in Victor’s skull, age be damned.

The kid laughs, pulls a switchblade from seemingly nowhere, and drives it under Barnes’s ribs. Barnes screams bloody murder, straining against the ratchet straps holding him in place. Sam chucks the shield at Victor, but he ducks as smooth as butter, and the shield of course, _of course_ , hits the wall behind his head and stays there. Fuck that thing.

Victor comes back up and looks at the shield, then at Sam. He tsks, the son of a bitch, and pulls his knife out of Barnes. Barnes doesn’t scream this time, but he sure sounds like he wants to.

_“Sam, what’s going on in there?”_

Sam ignores Sharon and raises his gun.

“What the fuck is your game, man?”

Victor smiles and steps around the table. He gestures to Barnes’s side and the hole there is gone, and his nose is as straight as an arrow again and bruised to hell.

“Research,” the kid says simply, like that explains it all.

And before their very eyes the spot he stabbed him in closes up, leaving a patch of shiny pink skin in its wake.

“Fuck you,” Barnes spits, and Sam is too shocked to do much of anything but stare.

Victor presses the switchblade, slick with blood, against Barnes’s throat and gets real close to his face. “Careful, Sargeant, or I’ll get you where you’ll bleed out before you can get a chance to heal.”

Sam fires his gun. It hits the kid in the shoulder.

_“Sam?!”_

Victor stumbles but doesn’t fall, and slowly, serenely, he pulls the shield out of the stucco and hurls it at him in a sparkling flash of red, white, and blue. It knocks his gun right out of his hand, and the weapon crashes through the already-cracked glass of the window and out of sight. The shield lands somewhere behind him.

“What the hell?”

The kid shrugs, and the gesture should fucking hurt like a son of a bitch, but he remains unbothered. _Something real weird is going on here._ “Lucky shot.”

And feeling like he’s in a dream, Victor pops open a drawer on the desk and pulls out his own gun. 

“No!” Barnes screams into his teeth as he tries and fails to bust through his restraints.

Victor lifts his arm, shoulder saturated with red and getting darker every second, and points the gun at Sam.

He pulls the trigger.

The bullet grazes his ear, and it hurts so bad Sam swears he blacks out standing up for a second, but he’s fine, he’s fine.

He laughs, a little bit in surprise, a lotta bit nervously. He can feel warm blood running down his neck, soaking into his shirt, but ears always blood like a busted fire hydrant. He’s okay.

“Not so lucky.”

He fetches the shield and swings with everything in him. It cracks Victor in the side of the head and comes sailing back at him. Sam catches it.

Barnes laughs a little crazidly. Sam’s gonna chalk it up to blood loss.

Victor does go down then, but he doesn’t drop his gun, instead firing it over the desk and into Barnes’s leg. Barnes all but gives himself a concussion with how hard he throws his head against the desk.

“What the fuck!” He throws the shield again and it knocks the gun out of his hand this time. Sam doesn’t see where it lands. “Stay down, man. You’re fucking sick.”

When Victor rises, he’s got a slash across his temple, and the blood is flowing down his face and into his mouth. His teeth are stained red when he smiles. “I am a researcher.”

“Sam,” Barnes groans. He’s pale as death, “watch his mouth.”

Victor gapes down at him, and Sam thinks it’s the only true emotion he’s seen on him. “I am insulted, Sargeant. Do you truly think me to be HYDRA? HYDRA failed, they’re gone,” he almost sounds angry. “They were cowards. I am better than a hollow tooth and a snake metaphor.”

“You’re a fucking teenager,” Sam spits, wiping blood off his neck.

“I am twenty-three!” The switchblade makes a reappearance and Victor slams it down into Barnes’s gut like he’s slamming his fists down on the dinner table. 

“Bucky!”

Sharon is screaming in his ear but Sam barely hears her over Barnes’s own screaming.

Sam throws the shield again. This time it knocks Victor unconscious.

He stands there for a few seconds just...breathing.

Barnes makes a gross little gurgle.

_Barnes._

He crosses the room quickly, grabs his shield from the floor, and smashes the latches on the straps. Metal goes flying, pinging off the windows and the walls.

Barnes’s eyes are closed.

“Oh no, you don’t,” he grabs his face in his hand and shakes him around a little. His nose scrunches up like Sam’s disturbing his beauty rest. _“Bucky.”_

Sam lets go of his face and stares down at the knife sticking out of his stomach. 

“Shit.”

“Fuck, you were in Pararescue, just pull it out,” Barnes’s eyes are still shut tight, but holy hell at least he’s alive. Sam was starting to worry a little there. Just a little. 

“Buck, man, I am not just pulling it out.”

Barnes looks him in the eye then and clamps one bloody hand around his wrist. “You can pull it out. Trust me.”

So Sam grips the handle of the blade and pulls it out with a sickening squelch. Barnes only screams a little, and the wound in his gut starts pouring blood down his tighty-whities. The scream dies in his throat soon after and he stops moving altogether.

“Barnes, wake the fuck up.”

He’s got three bleeding holes in him currently but Sam only has one free hand so he presses down hard as he can on the one he just pulled the knife out of. Barnes doesn’t even stir.

“You gotta be shitting me, man. You beat the holy Hell outta Steve back on Insight Day and his dumbass lived. Hell, you survived decades of shit. Come _on_.”

_“Sam, backup is on their way to you.”_

He presses a bloody finger into his ear. “Thanks, Sharon.” Then down to Barnes, “Sharon’s stupid cat is gonna have kittens, you know. You never shut up about wanting a cat of your own, so come on.”

It’s deadly silent for a second, and then, “my clothes are on the floor.”

Relief floods through Sam so quick his legs almost give out. It takes everything in him not to slap the son of a bitch across the face. “Damnit, man, you’d think I just offered up a naked lady.”

Sam looks over the desk and finds his pajamas in a pile on the carpet. 

“I think I’d rather take the kitten.”

Well that’s something that definitely needs to be unpacked when Barnes isn’t on the fucking brink of death. He hands the shirt to him for him to press over the gut wound and is ready to tie the sweatpants around his leg as a tourniquet when Barnes stops him. 

“No, wait.”

He groans, curls around himself, and the bullet that was in his leg pops out and drops to the floor, joining about six other bullets Sam didn’t notice until now. Fuck, what the hell was that kid up to? He kind of wants to accidentally kick him in the head while he’s out.

“That was fucking gross, Barnes, thanks.”

“Alright, slip them on for me.”

So Sam helps Barnes into his pants and doesn’t think about how this is the weirdest thing they’ve done. But after a morning like today’s, he thinks they’re probably way past helping each other get _dressed_.

“You alright, Buck?” He asks when Barnes is on his feet. His shoes aren’t to be found, so he assumes Victor snatched him straight out of bed. He still doesn’t get _how_. The guy looks a hundred pounds soaking wet!

But Barnes just laughs. “You called me by my name.”

Sam is tempted to leave him here for Sharon’s backup to find. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But he’s smiling.

“Is this—are we _friends_ now? Did it take me getting abducted by a psychopath for us to finally become friends?”

“First of all, you were kidnapped.”

Barnes elbows him in the side. “I was not.”

“You were napped,” he points to Victor’s body on the floor at the foot of the desk, “by a kid.”

Barnes laughs again, then groans, curling into himself just a little further. “Touché.”

Sam all but carries him out of the room, and when they get out into the darkened hallway the thunderous pound of boots in the far stairwell can clearly be heard. Barnes looks back into the room, at his blood all over the place, at Victor on the floor who’s just starting to stir.

“They’ll clean up here,” Sam tells him.

“Thank God for Sharon,” Barnes laughs again, and he sounds a little delirious. 

Sam looks down at him. “How are you good, man? Isn’t this the shit that HYDRA used to do to you?”

He frowns. “Strap me to a table and cut me open all night long? Sure was.”

Anger bubbles up Sam’s throat, but he swallows it down.

“I dunno. I think I’m in shock. Probably won’t sleep tonight though.”

Sam hoists him a little higher when he feels his legs start to drag. “I’ll call my therapist up and make a joint appointment for tomorrow.”

Sharon’s SWAT team comes barreling

down the hallway. “There’s an ambulance waiting outside,” one of the men tells them. “Want me to take him?”

“Nah, I got it. Go put that kid in cuffs.”

“Roger that.”

“What happened?” Sam asks when they start their tedious descent down the stairs. The gut wound and the hole below his ribs have closed up enough that Barnes has stuffed his shirt in the pocket of his sweatpants and is holding onto the handrail for dear life.

“Woke up around three to find Victor’s creepy ass standing over my bed. Pistol whipped me real good. Broke my nose.”

“How’d he get you through the window?”

Barnes screws his face up, like he’s trying real hard to remember. Now would not be the best time for his short-term memory loss to kick in.

“I think there was someone else with him. Don’t know who, though. Victor was real adamant about doing shit himself.”

They pause on the landing between the third and second floor so Barnes can catch his breath.

“Do you know who he’s working for?”

“Not HYDRA, he made that real clear. I have no idea, Sam,” he sounds dead tired suddenly, like all his adrenaline and shock decided to ooze out of him all at once. “He just told me he wanted to find out firsthand how my healing factor worked. I don’t know.”

“That’s alright,” Sam rubs his back. Yet another weird thing they’ve never done. Today is apparently a day of firsts. “Sharon’s guys’ll get it out of him.”

They start to move again. They don’t speak until they reach the bottom of the stairwell.

“Sam, I’m—I’m sorry.”

This time it’s Sam’s turn to laugh. “Man, for what?”

“For everything. For constantly busting your balls. For yesterday.”

Now is Sam’s chance to spew that apology he was rehearsing during dinner last night, but the words won’t come to him. He suddenly feels like he’s going to cry. Oh, man, if Barnes sees him cry the ball-busting won’t ever stop.

“Barnes...Bucky. I’m the one who’s sorry. I was way outta line. It’s just, you’re the easiest—”

“The easiest target?” Barnes huffs out a laugh through his healing nose. “Yeah, I could say the same thing about you. We’re just constantly taking shit out on each other, and I know your therapist would say that’s not the healthiest coping mechanism.”  
He tips his head. “You’re right there.”

“You did real good with the shield though. Despite all your yelling, it looks like you learned a little something.”

Sam bumps said shield into the leg that didn't just have a bullet in it. “Shut the hell up,” his cheeks feel a little warm, and he knows it’s not the blood from his ear.

“But I have to say, I think nostalgia did get the better of me. I didn’t mean to force you into being someone you aren’t or...don’t want to be.”

Jesus Christ on a cracker, where the hell are these manners coming from? Barnes has always been a perfect gentleman with everyone but him.

Strange times, indeed.

“No, man, listen. I appreciate you trying to help me with the whole Cap thing. It’s just a lot.”

“You know you don’t gotta do it, right? Steve won’t be mad.”

Sam holds him a little tighter. “Today is not the day for that conversation. I’m sorry, you’re sorry, let’s leave it at that.”

“Alright.”

They head outside. Barnes squints against the mid-morning sun.

“But you did whip that thing around real nice.”

“Bucky!”

Sharon’s got her phone held between her ear and shoulder, and her gun held out. She hugs Barnes with her free arm, then pushes him back to get a good look at him.

“What the hell happened?”

Barnes cringes, so Sam answers for him. “Just a little science experiment. The concussed college kid upstairs will tell you all about it. As for Buck and I, we’re gonna take a little trip to the hospital and then we’re gonna sleep for the rest of the day.”

Sharon stops and looks between the two of them, a little knowing smile on her face.

“Hold on a minute. _Buck?_ Are we finally getting along?”

Barnes laughs, and Sam says, “We’ll see tomorrow. He might try to smother me in my sleep.”

Barnes rolls his eyes so hard they almost fall out of his head but…it's all good. They sure have a hell of a lot of shit to talk over and to work through, and there's probably a conspiracy waiting to be uncovered in regards to Victor and his mystery man, but they're good. 

Maybe being friends doesn't sound so bad after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> tfatws 2020 nation rise up!
> 
> twitter: @thehowlies


End file.
